plays
by noticing particularly if the closing treatment of the material in
hand seem germane to the subject; if it avoid anti-climax and keep the
key; and if it demonstrates skill in overcoming such obstacles as have
been indicated. Such a play-goer will not slight the final act as of
only technical importance, but will be alertly on the watch to see if
his friend the playwright successfully grapples with the last of the
successive problems which arise during the complex and very difficult
business of telling a stage story with clearness, effectiveness and
charm.

CHAPTER XI

THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PLAY

We have now surveyed the chief elements involved in the making of a play
and suggested an intelligent attitude on the part of the play-goer
toward them. Primarily the aim has been to broaden and sharpen the
appreciation of a delightful experience; for the sake of personal
culture. But, as was briefly suggested in the chapter on the play as a
cultural possibility, there is another reason why the student and
theater attendant should realize that the drama in its possibilities is
a work of art, and the theater, the place where it is exhibited, can be
a temple of art. This other reason looks to the social significance of
the playhouse as a great, democratic people's amusement where stories
can be heard and seen more effectively, as to influence, than anywhere
else or under any other imaginable conditions. It is a place where the
great lessons of life can be emotionally received and so sink deep into
the consciousness and conscience of folk at large. And so the question
of the theater becomes more than the question of private culture,
important as that is; being, indeed, a matter of social welfare. This
fact is now coming to be recognized in the United States, as it has long
been recognized abroad. We see more plainly than we did that when states
like France and Germany or the cities of such countries grant
subventions to their theaters and make theater directors high officials
of the government they do so not only from the conviction that the
theater stands for culture (a good thing for any country to possess) but
that they feel it to have a direct and vital influence upon the life of
the citizens in general, upon the civilization of the day. They assume
that the playhouse, along with the school, library, newspaper and
church, is one of the five mighty social forces in suggesting ideas to a
nation and c